


Sweet Dreams

by Inky_Pens



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Cardan pov, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22072477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inky_Pens/pseuds/Inky_Pens
Summary: The dream begins with her head rolling away from her body.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 1
Kudos: 122





	Sweet Dreams

**The dream begins with her head rolling away from her body.**

I slither next to her body, sick with myself for reveling in its warmth. Her blood spills over the dais, and I marvel at the color of it while I glide through it. It’s exquisite, like rubies and garnets, and befitting of the High Queen. I should have adorned her in them when I had the chance.

I know this is a dream only by the smile still on her rosy face. Jude rarely smiles outside of my dreamworld, and I have doubts she would enter death with anything other than her signature scowl. I never realized how small she was—and fragile. So imperceptibly fragile beneath her rage and terror. Why did I not see it before all this? Or had I, and was that why I sent her into exile from this godsforsaken place?

The war bewing inside me is my pride against my nature, as it has always been, so it comes as no surprise to me that I have lost against my this new nature. With her body drained of life and growing colder by the second, the snake wants to consume her. I smile to myself. No matter my form, I have always wanted to consume her in one way or another.

My nostrils flare with the rusty tang of her blood filling the room. My tongue flicks out to taste the air, and I think she must be sweet, too. The snake tells me it is necessary to eat the kill, to devour her and be done with this, to keep moving. I fight in vain, because whatever soul that was in me when I was cursed into this form vanished the moment I struck Jude down. But still, I fight for her dignity. I can imagine her supreme irritation if she were to know that I had made a meal out of her corpse.

“Leave it,” I tell myself, the snake. “They will be coming for her,” I reason. “They can do worse than kill us.”

The snake hisses in response, nudging Jude’s head as though it were a toy. I can’t stomach it, but neither can I look away. “Leave it!” I command, but I have no authority in here. My shouts of horror and rage echo in a cacophony around me. The snake’s jaw opens generously, aligns itself with her head, and I can see her breathtaking smile turned towards me. It’s all I see. It’s all I see. It’s all--

I awake with a jolt the sends me jumping to my feet, trembling in the dark bedchamber. Jude is awake and alert as well. She switches on a lamp and looks at me without expectation. I realize then that she has witnessed this before.

“Cardan—” she begins, but I cannot bear to hear the pity nor the warmth in her voice. It should be a balm to soothe my frayed nerves. Instead, it stokes the fire of my growing resentment.

I send a knight to fetch someone from the kitchen to prepare breakfast and tea a good two hours before usual. In one of the sitting rooms, I wait in the dark hoping Jude will not come looking for me, and if she does, hoping her mortal eyesight will not strain to find me huddled in the corner. I place my head between my knees, silently pull in lungfuls of air that burn on their way down. _I wish I had died along with the snake_ , I sometimes think. Or worse, _I wish I would have remained the snake forever._ I could never admit it outside the confines of my own head, suffocated by the vice that is the High King’s crown. It was the first glimpse of freedom I had ever tasted. I laugh at the irony of that. Trapped inside of a cursed beast and yet, I felt more alive and freer than I have ever been.

Am I glad to have returned? Yes, I tell the Folk. It is honest enough, even if only partially true. To Jude, the simplicity does not satisfy her curiosity, but I have not been able to consider the words carefully enough to say them aloud. I am glad to hold her again. I am glad to feel her lips against mine and lose myself in her. For those reasons, I am glad to have returned. But the weight of the crown feels heavier than ever before, and I wish to renounce it and find a distant island to spend my days with her. Lay it all to waste, if we must, so long as we can live out our days in peace.

But when I look at her on the throne with her own glittering diadem, when I watch her gain the upper-hand in Council meetings by playing strategically and aggressively, when I catch her overlooking the courtyard with a secret, private smile, I know that I cannot steal this from her. Jude’s relationship with Elfhame is not unlike her relationship with me, an evolution of fear and hatred into familiarity and love. This is her home and one she is fit to rule. A gift she has earned for all she has endured, although it is an inherited burden for me. I would be cursed and slain a thousand more times to keep her on the throne for as long as she wishes to stay.

I come to this resolution each time the nightmare occurs, so it is with little difficulty that I pull myself to my feet and make my way out of my despair and into her world once again.

She waits for me on one of the couches, a book in hand and a cup of tea beside her. Her eyes pick up to meet mine as I enter the room, and for a moment they burn me with the want of honesty that I am not sure how to give her. Only for a moment, though, because she diverts her attention back to her book and speaks to me casually.

“If we continue to start our days this early, then I am going to have to insist you stop keeping me up so late.”

I smirk. It is an easy bait, and she knows it, but I cling to it gratefully, nonetheless. “Technically, love, it is you that keeps me up. In fact, it is often difficult to contain myself when I am in a room with you.”

She takes a pointed glance at my groin and rolls her eyes. “You seem to be doing just fine right now.”

It is easy to sit next to her and even easier to pull her against me. She curls her body around mine until she is practically in my lap. I feel her lips against the underside of my jaw, her hands squeezing between myself and the cushion behind me to hold me closer. We stay like this long enough that my eyes grow heavy and my head tips back. I feel her chest rise and fall rhythmically. It eases the ache in me as the lingering black poison the snake left behind recedes like the tide. For now, at least.

I am almost asleep when Jude begins speaking in a soft and dreamy whisper. “I used to have them, too. Sometimes, you didn’t come back for me and I became part of the sea. Other times, I fought my way to the surface, and you were there to pull me out. Both were cathartic in their own ways.”

It was hard to breathe but I held her tighter. She seemed to be ruminating on it within her own mind, allowing me the reprieve from a response.

“It will pass,” is all she said. It was silent enough that I could hear her struggle through the lump in her throat to get the words out. And I could tell right then that it does, in fact, not pass.

The thing about Folks is that we cannot lie to each other, or to anyone else for that matter, but nothing prevents us from lying to ourselves. So though I could not form the words aloud, I repeated it in my head, if only to keep the darkness contained. _It will pass. It will pass._

**Author's Note:**

> For mild story teasers on what I'm working on and what I'm listening to when writing, you can find me on Twitter @inkypensfiction.


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